How much does a law firm website cost?

Looking established gets you past the first glance. Cases come from a page for each practice area someone might search, written in plain language for a person who has never hired a lawyer: what the process looks like, what a first consultation costs, what to bring, and what to do next. A single “practice areas” page rarely ranks for any of them.

The other half is the map. For “family lawyer” plus your town, the Google Maps listing shows above the regular results, and it needs a website that matches it on firm name, address, phone number and practice areas. Then the path to contact has to be short: a tappable phone number on every page and an intake form that says when you’ll reply. If the site already exists and the problem is ranking, that’s my law firm SEO services page.

• Your phone number on every page, tappable on a phone.
• What kind of law you practice and where, in the first line.
• A page per practice area, explaining the process in plain language and what to do next.
• Attorney bios with bar admissions and the courts you practice in.
• A short intake form that tells the visitor when to expect a reply.
• Reviews, within your state’s advertising rules.
• Office address, parking and hours, matching your Google Business Profile exactly.
• Answers to common questions, like what a first consultation costs and what to bring.

DIY on Squarespace or a similar builder can work for a new solo practice that mostly gets work by referral. You’ll get a clean, simple site. You won’t get much search traffic from it, and the time you spend on it is time you aren’t billing.

A freelancer fits most solo practices and small firms. You get a custom site, someone who understands local search, and one person who knows your practice. Check that they write clearly and carefully about legal topics, and ask to see the copy on other firms’ sites.

A legal marketing agency makes sense for larger firms running paid ads across several practice areas. Read the contract closely, and if the site is bundled into a monthly fee, find out who keeps it when you leave.

Firms that have had a site for years often have pages and links that still bring in visits. Before launch I map each old address to its new page and set up redirects, so that traffic and the rankings behind it carry over instead of resetting. Skip this and the new site can lose traffic the month it goes live, which is a bad way to start.

Before you cancel anything, check that the domain is registered in the firm’s name and that you can log in to it. If a legal marketing company holds it as part of a package, get it moved first. The domain is the one thing you can’t rebuild.