Someone who was just rear ended, served with divorce papers or arrested over the weekend does not search for a law firm by name. They search for the problem, often on a phone, often late at night. The firms that show up are the ones with a page that matches that search.
That page is a practice area page. Done well, it appears for the problem, explains it in plain language and makes the first call easy. Done badly, it is a paragraph of legal jargon that reads like every other firm in the county. This guide covers how to plan, write and connect these pages.
Table of Contents
Why Practice Area Pages Matter
Google needs to know which kinds of cases you take and where. Your Google Business Profile tells it part of that through your categories, such as Personal injury attorney or Family law attorney. Your website has to tell it the rest, and it does that through a page for each practice area.
A single page listing every area you handle gives Google one page to rank for many different searches. It also gives a worried reader no clear answer. Separate pages fix both problems.
Plan Your Pages Around Real Searches
Start with the main practice areas, then break each one into the specific matters people search for. A personal injury firm might plan pages like these:
- Car accidents, truck accidents and motorcycle accidents
- Slip and fall and other premises injuries
- Dog bites
- Wrongful death
- Workplace injuries, where the firm handles them
A family law firm would split divorce, child custody, child support, adoption and protective orders. A criminal defense firm might split DUI, drug charges, assault and expungement. Only build pages for matters your firm really takes, and leave the rest to a short note on the main practice page.
Avoid near duplicate pages for the same matter, like one page for car accident lawyer and another for auto accident attorney. One strong page per matter, written in the words people use, is clearer for readers and for Google.
What Goes on a Practice Area Page
- A clear heading that names the matter and where you practice.
- A plain summary of the problem and who the page is for, written for a reader, not a judge.
- What usually happens next, such as the stages of a claim or a case, in general terms.
- What to keep or gather now, like paperwork, photos or letters from an insurer.
- How fees work for that kind of matter, explained the way your rules allow.
- Who handles the case, with links to the attorney bios.
- Questions people ask about that matter, answered briefly.
- A clear way to reach intake, with the phone number at the top and the hours someone answers.
Write for the person who is scared and confused. Short sentences, no Latin, no walls of statute citations. If a term matters, explain it once in plain words.
Office and Location Pages
Each real office should have its own page with the address, directions, parking, the attorneys who work there and the practice areas handled from that office. Each staffed office can also have its own Google Business Profile, and the page and the profile should list the same name, address and phone.
Do not set up offices that are only a mailbox or a rented desk nobody uses. Google does not allow them, and a profile built on one can be suspended. If you serve towns beyond your offices, write about the courts and counties you appear in instead of pretending to have an office there.
Attorney Bio Pages
Practice area pages lean on attorney bios. Each attorney should have a page with bar admissions, the practice areas they handle, education and background, written in plain words. Link each bio from the practice areas that attorney works on, and link back the other way.
A reader deciding who to trust with a custody dispute or an injury claim wants to know who will actually handle it. A real photo and a plain description of how that attorney works with clients answers that better than a list of titles.
Bar Advertising Rules Come First
Lawyer advertising is regulated, and the rules differ by state bar and, in Canada, by law society. Those rules apply to your website. They can cover how you describe your experience, whether you may use words like specialist or expert, and how anything about past matters is presented.
State bar advertising rules apply to every page. The firm reviews every page before it goes live.
In practice, that means plain descriptions of the work, no promises about outcomes and no claims to be the best. Anything touching past matters needs the firm's own review against its rules before it appears anywhere on the site.
Connect the Pages
Link each practice area page to its sub pages, to the attorneys who handle that work and to the office pages. Link related matters to each other, like car accidents and truck accidents. A visitor who lands on any page should be able to reach intake in a tap or two.
Intake matters as much as the page. If calls go to voicemail at night, a page that ranks still loses the caller. Show your intake hours honestly and make sure someone answers during them.
Your Practice Area Page Checklist
- List every practice area and the specific matters inside each one.
- Plan one page per matter your firm really takes.
- Write each page in plain language with a clear path to intake.
- Build a page for each real office and match it to its Business Profile.
- Link practice areas, attorneys and offices together.
- Have the firm review every page for bar rules before it goes live.
This is how we approach law firm SEO: practice area pages, office pages and the Business Profile working together, with the firm reviewing everything before it is published. See website design for how we build the site. The website is included, and Local SEO starts at $999/month.