Law Firm Local SEO and PPC Pricing

Local SEO and PPC Pricing for Attorneys & Law Firms

More than one of our law firm clients came to us with the same initial questions: How much does law firm SEO cost? How much is law firm PPC?

We know how much a bottom-line price matters when you’re setting your law firm’s marketing budget and how important it is for any type of business to know what they’ll get for their money. Here’s what you need to know to make an informed decision about the costs of law firm local SEO and pay-per-click advertising.

Local SEO costs for lawyers.

Here at Dagmar, the average monthly costs for local SEO campaigns for law firms range from $1,500 to $2,300 for one physical location. A number of variables can affect local SEO pricing, including:

• Locations: We do take advantage of some efficiencies that come with having one website with multiple brick-and-mortar locations, but even then, there are recurring costs for managing multi-location campaigns. On average, each location will result in costs of $750 to 1,500 per month.
• Links: One essential tactic in SEO—and local SEO in particular—is building links from relevant, authoritative websites back to your site. Google sees these as proof of your firm’s legitimacy, an important ranking factor. The most valuable links are not easy to acquire, so a significant number of hours is needed to develop one good link. Costs for link development may be from $500 to $1,500 a month.
• Citations: These are another important ranking factor and making sure your firm and its locations are in the top online directories is a local SEO fundamental. The costs to manage citations ranges from $50 to $150 a month.

What’s included in law firm local SEO campaigns.

In short, local search engine optimization strategies and tactics increase the likelihood that people searching online for a nearby business will more easily find you before they find your competitors. In the background, there are a lot of moving parts that help determine when and where a local company appears on search results pages. These parts range from simple, one-time tasks, to tactics that must either be done repeatedly or be built over time. They include off-site and on-site work, both of which are needed for the best results.

In addition to developing links and managing citations, this is some of the work that goes into campaigns and pricing:

The number of law office locations you have.

Keeping in mind that people searching online will see the office locations in their local areas, each of your physical locations need to be managed as separate businesses. For the best rankings, and to attract leads, each location needs its own pages on your website, unique bodies of content, its own citations, and more.

Local SEO providers devote a great deal of time to developing these high-value links—they’re rarely easy to obtain, but because of their value, the search for them is constant. Link building, also referred to as link development, is a significant factor in the cost of local SEO for law firms.

The number of distinct practice areas you have.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say your main practice areas are criminal law and family law. We would begin the development of your local SEO campaigns with keyword research to find the keywords that your prospective clients use to find an attorney in each of those practice areas. The more specific types of law you need to promote, the more campaigns we will need to create, manage, monitor, and adjust to help your law firm be more visible to prospective clients in each area.

Your competition.

The price for your specific local SEO campaigns is also influenced by the number and strength of your competitors. How many attorneys will you have to compete with online and how well are their websites and online presence optimized? The answer may mean your law firm will need a larger budget to bring you up to the top of the pack. That budget will be used to create a great deal of new, relevant content every month, obtain more links from other authoritative websites, and more. If you have multiple locations, these things will need to be done for each one.

Your current local SEO status.

Every law firm client we work with came to us at varying points along the digital marketing spectrum. If you have a brand-new practice, your website will need to be optimized to ensure you have a good foundation for building a local online presence. If your website is well-established but lacks proper optimization (or has even been compromised by low-quality SEO), a good deal of the initial work on your site will be devoted to correcting existing issues. Lastly, if you have had a website for your law firm for a considerable amount of time but haven’t done any optimization, you’ll have the advantage of an established site but will need months of work to build your local rankings.

Law firm PPC costs.

While we can give you an idea of law firm SEO pricing, pay-per-click advertising is another matter. What you spend on PPC comes down to what you’re willing to spend, plus these factors:

• Your bidding strategy and the goals that have been defined for each campaign
• How relevant your paid ads are to your target audience
• How much your strongest local competitors are paying for the keywords you also need to compete for

We’re glad to discuss our management fees for PPC and answer your questions about paid search campaigns for your law firm. Please get in touch with us for a free consultation.

So, how much should your law firm SEO and PPC cost?

No matter which law firm digital marketing strategies you contract for, you will clearly get what you pay for. A small budget may help you achieve some short-term returns, but won’t provide the foundation you need for long-term, sustainable results. This doesn’t mean you need to spend five figures a month either, unless your firm has multiple brick-and-mortar locations.

If you’re new to local SEO and/or PPC, it’s best to talk to a number of digital marketing agencies or other providers who have specific experience marketing law firms online. Look for law firm SEO experts—find out how they structure their fees and be sure to request case studies or referrals so you can see what they’ve done for other firms like yours.