Law firm SEO case study: 13 offices, organic traffic more than tripled
A Los Angeles personal injury firm with more than ten lawyers and 13 offices had paid a previous agency for over a year and seen nothing move. Its site had one generic page per practice area, so none of its offices could rank for the case type and city searches that bring in clients. Over a 12-month engagement, with no paid ads running, organic traffic more than tripled and case enquiries from organic search grew two to three times.
The engagement in brief
| Client | Personal injury law firm, Greater Los Angeles, more than ten lawyers (anonymised; published with the client’s approval) |
|---|---|
| Market | 13 offices across the Los Angeles area |
| Engagement | 12 months |
| Starting point | One to two years with a previous SEO agency and no results; one generic page per practice area; no paid ads |
| Work | Practice area and office location pages, office-level local SEO, technical fixes, reviews and local links. All in-house |
| Result | Organic traffic more than tripled, organic case enquiries up two to three times, 9 of 13 offices in the map pack top three |
| Data | Google Analytics 4 and the firm’s own intake records |
Every office shared the same pages
The site was built for one firm, not for its offices. Each practice area had a single page written for Los Angeles as a whole. Someone searching for a car accident lawyer in a particular city or neighbourhood found nothing on the site about that place, so the office nearest them had nothing to rank with.
The office profiles were not doing their job. Each office had a Business Profile, and our audit found problems across them that were holding the offices back in the map pack. In Greater Los Angeles, where a searcher’s location decides much of the result, every office needs to compete for its own patch.
A year or more of SEO had left problems behind. The audit also found technical issues on the site and spammy links in its backlink profile that needed cleaning up.
Personal injury is one of the most expensive markets in search, and most firms there buy their visibility. This firm was running no paid ads at all, so organic search had to carry the whole caseload.
Four workstreams, biggest problem first
The page architecture was the biggest constraint, so it came first, with the technical fixes alongside. Everything was delivered in-house.
- Content
Build pages for each case type and office
We replaced the one-page-per-practice-area structure with pages for each case type and for the cities the offices serve, so every office had pages that matched the searches made around it.
- Technical SEO
Fix the foundation
We fixed the technical issues the audit found, so the new pages could be crawled, indexed and ranked as they went live.
- Local SEO
Fix every office profile
Office-level local SEO across all locations, starting with the Business Profile problems the audit found at each office.
- Reviews and links
Earn local authority
A review process for the firm’s offices, local links to support the office pages, and cleanup of the spammy links in the backlink profile.
More cases from search, without buying a single click
Within 12 months, organic traffic had more than tripled and case enquiries from organic search had grown two to three times. Nine of the firm’s 13 offices now sit in the map pack top three for their main searches. The firm ran no paid ads during the engagement, so the growth came from search alone.
- Organic traffic: more than 3x, measured in Google Analytics 4.
- Case enquiries from organic search: 2 to 3x, from the firm’s own intake records.
- Map pack: 9 of 13 offices in the top three for their primary searches.
“We thought SEO is dead before working with them. Now SEO is our lifeline.”
Founder, personal injury law firm, Los Angeles
How we read it:
- A multi-office firm needs pages for every office’s area. A single citywide page per practice area gives Google nothing to show for searches in the places each office serves.
- Enquiries, not traffic, are the measure. We judged the work on intake records, the number a law firm runs on.
- Organic can carry a personal injury firm. In a market where most competitors pay for every click, the firm grew its caseload with no ad spend at all.
Compare it with our Texas law firm case study, where the same principle, pages for every place the firm serves, worked across 12 counties.
Three lessons for multi-office law firms
- Check what each office can rank with. If every office points at the same practice area pages, most of them are competing with nothing. Our local SEO guide explains how the map pack and the website work together.
- Audit the work you have already paid for. A year or more of SEO can leave spammy links and technical faults behind. An independent SEO audit shows what is really there.
- Measure cases, not sessions. Tie organic search to your intake records. Our personal injury lawyer SEO reports on enquiries and signed cases.
Los Angeles law firm SEO case study: questions
How long did this law firm SEO engagement take?
12 months. Over that time the firm’s organic traffic more than tripled, case enquiries from organic search grew two to three times, and 9 of its 13 offices reached the map pack top three.
What was holding the firm back?
Its site had one generic page per practice area for 13 offices, so no office could rank for the case type and city searches around it. The audit also found Business Profile problems across the offices, technical issues and spammy links left from earlier SEO work.
Was the firm running paid ads at the same time?
No. The firm ran no paid ads during the engagement, so the growth in traffic and enquiries came from organic search.
Can Crown guarantee the same result for my firm?
No. Nobody can guarantee rankings or map pack positions. What we commit to is diagnosing what holds your firm back, fixing it in the right order, and reporting what it produces in enquiries and cases.