How much should a law firm spend on a website and SEO? The arithmetic, without the pitch

A law firm should spend on a website what it takes to build one that passes the referral check, meets the Transparency Rules and ranks for the offices, once, and on SEO what the extra matters justify, monthly, judged against the fee income from one conveyancing file or one probate. The first is a one-off and should be modest. The second is a retainer and should pay for itself several times over by month twelve, or stop. This guide is the arithmetic for both, with no prices in it, because the numbers that matter are the firm's.

Two different purchases

Treat them as two purchases from two budgets. The site is capital: made once, owned by the firm, expected to last for years, and its job is to pass the referral check, meet the rules and rank for the offices. The monthly work is operating cost: a page or guide added, reviews invited as files close, register and directory entries reconciled, profiles maintained, figures read, and its job is the practice searches. Firms go wrong by muddling the two, paying a retainer to promote a site nobody is feeding, or buying a site and waiting for it to rank for conveyancing on its own.

The site: what modest means

The price of a firm's site is set by how many pages need writing properly and how many offices need their own, not by the size of the firm. Five practice areas and the regulated fee pages is the small-firm site; ten practice areas, three offices and thirty fee-earner profiles is more, because someone writes each page and a fee earner checks it. The signs of a fair quote: the pages are listed, the photographs are of the firm, hosting and care are priced in writing, the regulatory pages are named, and the firm owns the domain and the site at the end.

SEO: the arithmetic

Three numbers from the firm's own accounts. First, the fee income from a typical matter in the department that should grow. Second, the proportion of enquiries that become instructions; where the telephone is answered and the fee is quoted plainly it is commonly a third. Third, how many additional matters a month the department can actually take. Multiply, and you have the enquiries a month the work must produce and the fee income they represent; set that against the tier. One conveyancing file a month covering the retainer makes the decision simple. A department that only wants small fixed-fee matters may find the sums do not work, in which case the site alone is the right purchase.

The question to hold any agency to: how many enquiries a month, for which practice areas, in which towns, by when, and how will the partners see it in Search Console? An answer with numbers is a plan. An answer about brand and thought leadership is not.

What moves the price up honestly

• More practice areas needing pages, and more regulated services needing fee pages.
• More offices: each is a profile, an office page and a set of reviews.
• More towns genuinely served: each needs evidence, not a templated page.
• More content each month: two pages a month builds faster than one and costs more because someone writes them and a fee earner checks them.

What moves it up dishonestly

• 'Competitive market' surcharges. Competition changes the timeline, not the cost of the work.
• Bundles you cannot check: 'link building', 'digital PR', 'thought leadership' without a list of what is delivered.
• Long contracts to 'see results'. Three months shows whether the work is being done; twelve months up front is a way to stop you leaving.
• Guarantees. Nobody controls Google; a guarantee is a sales device, and for a regulated firm it is a warning sign about the agency's other claims.

When not to spend at all

If the firm is at capacity with the work it wants, from referrers it likes, at its rates: a modest site that passes the referral check and meets the rules, with a correct profile per office, is enough, and no retainer. Spend on SEO when you want to change the work, not just get more of it: more private client, less low-value litigation, a new office, a specialism. The retainer is a lever for choosing.

How to know it is working

By month three, impressions rising in Search Console for the practice searches in your towns. By month six, enquiries you can trace to the site and the profiles, with the practice area and the office in each. By month twelve, the arithmetic above coming true, several times over. Any agency should show you these numbers from Google's own tools, not from a dashboard of their own, and should tell you at month six if they are not coming.