Law firm SEO case study

A firm invisible to newcomers

The firm was well known to people who already knew it and invisible to everyone else. It has practiced for more than three decades and ranks among the leading firms in its country. It handles corporate and banking work alongside its intellectual property practice. Its work also covers employment and data protection. Its clients include local corporations and financial institutions. It also serves international companies, with all work available in its local language and in English.

Its website showed none of that. It had a handful of practice pages and lacked articles or structured data, which gave Google little to rank and gave AI assistants nothing to quote. Referrals kept the firm busy with clients who asked a colleague. A company that had never heard of the firm had no way to find it.

What the firm needed

The firm needed to appear in Google and AI assistants, where new businesses looked for legal help. Its country was developing and drawing in new companies. Those newcomers searched online for local guidance. More and more, they asked ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews which firm to contact about company formation or licensing. They also asked about employment contracts and data protection.

The firm's potential clients searched by the task in front of them, in English and in the local language. The firm showed up for none of those questions, and no assistant named it. The firm asked us to make it the answer when a newcomer asks.

Learning the practice

Before we wrote a word about the firm, we learned what it does.

1. 011Partner interviewsWe spoke with the partner behind each practice about the matters they take and the clients they want.
2. 022Advertising limitsThe same interviews covered what the firm must not promise under legal advertising rules.
3. 033Newcomer questionsWe researched the questions foreign companies ask when they enter the country.
4. 044Keywords in both languagesWe gathered keywords and search volumes in the local language and in English, then studied the pages that ranked for them.
5. 055AI answersWe checked which assistants answered those questions and which sources they cited.

The last step showed us who the assistants trusted in the firm's place. That told us what the new pages had to match before an assistant would cite them.

Building the content map

The content map turned that research into a plan for every page before any writing started. Each page got its own keyword research and search engine results page (SERP) analysis. The map included practice-area pages and longer guides. Most of the new pages were question pages for newcomers, on topics such as company formation and licences. These pages also addressed employment and tax registration. Data protection was another topic. Every page was planned in both languages.

Writing rules for the firm

We wrote more than 200 custom rules for our content engine so that every page sounds like the firm and still earns visibility. The engine then wrote the pages in both languages from those rules.

Rules for the firm's voice

These rules set the firm's tone and terminology, how to cite law, and what a page may or may not promise. For this law firm, one loose sentence about outcomes was not acceptable, so the advertising limits from the partner interviews went in as hard rules. Other rules covered both languages, so that an English page and its local-language twin say the same thing in each language's own legal terms.

Rules for AI answers

Our AI SEO rules for the firm were about structure. They put a direct answer to the question in the first sentence under each heading and cite the relevant law by name. Each page answers one newcomer question, so an assistant can lift a clean passage and attribute it to the firm. We wrote these rules against the target prompts in the content map.

Review rounds then autopublishing

Lawyers approved the system before anything went live automatically.

1. 011Lawyer reviewThe firm's lawyers reviewed the first pages line by line.
2. 022Rule fixesWhen a draft missed the firm's voice or a legal nuance, we fixed the rule behind it instead of patching the page.
3. 033More roundsAfter a few rounds, the lawyers were approving pages with few edits.
4. 044AutopublishingPages go live on the firm's own domain through a DNS connection. Nothing had to be migrated, and the setup works on any CMS.
5. 055Final approvalThe firm approves each page in the dashboard before it's published.

The rule fixes in Step 2 made scale possible because each fix carried to every later page. The lawyers could then spend their time improving the system.

Links for domain authority

The firm's site had little authority, so the new content also needed links. We built backlinks for the firm from legal directories and local business publications. Partner sites added more. We picked each source for its relevance to legal services in the firm's market.

The first lead

The first lead from search arrived well ahead of plan. With a small site and low authority, we expected the first lead after six to eight months. The first lead from search came after about four months.

Weekly prompt sets in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews showed the firm appearing in AI answers for newcomer questions in both languages. Those sets track the firm's mentions and share of voice. They also track sentiment and citations.

What this means for you

If your firm has a strong reputation and a thin website, measure your AI visibility before you commission any content. That baseline shows which newcomer questions already name a competitor. It also lets you check the four-month mark against your own numbers. Our SEO solutions start from the same audit of Google and AI assistants.

We then build the content map and publish reviewed pages on your own domain. To see where your firm stands today, get a free AI visibility report.