We get a lot of questions from prospective clients wondering how long SEO for lawyers will take. That’s a smart question to ask and one you should know the answer to so that your expectations are in line with what is realistic. According to Google’s Maile Ohye, it will take 4-12 months to see the benefits of SEO. You can watch the full video below. The statement is given at the 1:39 mark.
Of course, that is a general timeline given by Google. The level of SEO competition among law firms online is much more competitive than most other businesses competing in the local search space which means most law firms are looking at the longer end of that range. While that timeline of 4-12 months is in line of the experience we have as well, we see faster improvement in rankings for search phrases that are less competitive. For example, there is much less competition going after a term like “lemon lawyer Reno NV” as compared to “divorce lawyer Los Angeles”.
Note in this image above that there are 21,200 results in Google’s index for this search. In the world of lawyer marketing, that’s not very much. Let’s compare that to a more competitive search phrase.
For the “divorce lawyer Los Angeles” search, we get 2,300,000 results! There is much more competition for this search and it’s going to take longer to rank. While this gives us a general idea, what’s more important to look at are the websites that are appearing on the 1st page of search results. Additionally, the condition of your website also is a huge factor in how long SEO will take to see results.