Law Firm Growth Guide
10 Questions to Ask a Law Firm SEO Agency in LA
The interview is your only free look inside the agency. These ten questions, and the answers that should end the meeting, protect your budget and your bar license.
Technical Lead at SEO Noble
Author of 4 SEO books on Amazon, 15 years in search marketing, contributor to Search Engine Journal
The Short Answer
Ask about competitor conflicts, California Rule 7.1 compliance, proof in your practice area, directory and AI search strategy, ownership of everything, who does the work, how reporting ties to signed cases, what month one delivers, exit terms, and references from current law firm clients. The questions matter less than the speed and specificity of the answers. Good agencies answer instantly with documents. Weak ones answer slowly with adjectives.
Hiring an SEO agency is one of the few vendor decisions where a mistake costs you twice: the retainer you spent, and the year of growth your competitor got instead. In Los Angeles, where legal clicks are the most expensive in the country and every practice area is a knife fight, the interview is not a formality. It is the whole defense.
These ten questions are built for law firms specifically. Print them, bring them to the sales call, and write down what you hear. How an agency handles questions five and nine tells you more than any case study it will ever show you.
The Ten Questions
Do you work for any other firm in my practice area, in my market?
The answer you want: a clear policy, offered in writing, defining practice area and geography. Bonus points if they raise it before you do.
End the meeting if: they serve a direct competitor and see no issue, or the answer is a fog of every client is different. One agency cannot rank two LA divorce firms for the same terms. One of you is the priority, and it is not you.
How do you keep my content compliant with California Rule 7.1?
The answer you want: a named process. No guarantee language, no invented credentials, no fake reviews, attorney approval before publishing, and familiarity with ABA Model Rule 5.3, which puts responsibility for their conduct on you.
End the meeting if: they have never heard of Rule 7.1 or wave it off. If they will not protect your license in the interview, they will not protect it on page 47 of your blog archive.
Show me numbered results for a firm in my practice area, in a market like Los Angeles.
The answer you want: a walkthrough of a real campaign with dates, traffic, rankings, and lead volume over 12 or more months, in legal or a comparably competitive vertical.
End the meeting if: you get one dramatic chart with no timeline, or case studies only from low competition niches. Ranking a bakery in a small town proves nothing about ranking a PI firm in LA.
What is your plan for legal directories and AI search?
The answer you want: fluency. Super Lawyers, Justia, Avvo, Martindale Hubbell, Best Lawyers, and a reason they matter, because 2026 audits show AI assistants build legal recommendations largely from about seven directories.
End the meeting if: directories come up blank. An agency that does not know where AI looks for lawyers cannot make AI look at your firm.
Who owns the website, the content, and the accounts?
The answer you want: you own everything, in the contract, and you hold the primary logins to your site, analytics, Search Console, and Google Business Profile from day one, with the agency added as a user.
End the meeting if: the site lives on their platform, the content is licensed, or the accounts are theirs with your name on them. That is not a service agreement. It is a hostage arrangement with a monthly invoice.
Who actually does the work on my account?
The answer you want: a named team and their roles. Strategy by whom, content written by whom, reviewed by whom, and how much is outsourced to contractors you will never meet.
End the meeting if: the person selling disappears after signature and the work goes to an unnamed offshore queue. Some outsourcing is normal. Total anonymity about who touches your firm’s public voice is not.
What does the monthly report measure, and can I see a sample?
The answer you want: rankings and traffic, plus calls, form fills, and consultations from organic search, with a honest line about what is working and what is not. Signed case attribution is the gold standard.
End the meeting if: the sample report is screenshots of position charts with no lead data. That is an agency measuring the part of the job it controls instead of the part you pay for.
What exactly happens in the first 30 days?
The answer you want: a concrete list: technical audit and fixes, tracking and call measurement installed, Google Business Profile rebuilt, competitor analysis, and a written strategy naming target practice areas and cities.
End the meeting if: month one is onboarding and keyword research with no deliverables. You are not buying a process. You are buying work you can inspect.
What are the contract terms, and what do I keep if I leave?
The answer you want: a term that matches the work. Legal SEO needs 6 to 12 months to mature, so a 6 month initial term converting to month to month is fair, and everything built stays yours: site, content, links, accounts, and data.
End the meeting if: there is a 12 month lock with no exit, or your assets stay behind when you go. Confidence looks like short terms and full ownership. Everything else is a tell.
Can I talk to two current law firm clients?
The answer you want: yes, arranged within days. Then actually call them and ask what the agency is like at month eight, when the honeymoon is over and the rankings are still building.
End the meeting if: references are impossible due to confidentiality, always. One agency in town claims every single client is secret. Ask yourself what the odds are.
Slick Answers, Translated
A few responses sound reassuring in the room and mean something else entirely. We have proprietary technology usually means a reporting dashboard with a logo on it. We work with firms all over the country, with no specifics offered, usually means a long client list with high turnover. We guarantee first page visibility, without naming which search terms and which cities, usually means your firm name, which you already rank for. And we will handle everything, you will not need to lift a finger, means no attorney review of your content, which is exactly how Rule 7.1 problems get published under your name.
The pattern to notice: weak answers are designed to end the conversation. Strong answers invite more questions, because the agency has nothing to lose from you looking closer. When you hear a polished sentence that does not actually contain information, say it back as a request for the document behind it. The pause that follows is the most honest part of any sales call.
How to Run the Interview
Ask the same ten questions to at least two agencies, ideally three, and score the answers side by side. The comparison does the work for you, because weak answers are much easier to spot next to strong ones. Pay attention to behavior as much as content: the agency that asks about your case values, your capacity, and your best cities is thinking like a business partner. The agency that never asks anything is planning to deliver the same package it delivers everyone.
One more tactic: ask a question you already know the answer to. Ask how long results take when you have read Google’s guidance of 4 to 12 months. The agency that says 30 days is showing you its business model, and it is not SEO.
“You do not need to understand SEO to hire well for it. You need ten questions and the discipline to notice which answers come with documents and which come with adjectives.”
Kent Mauresmo, SEO Noble
What Passing Looks Like
An acting conservatory near Century City interviewed us with a list much like this one, including the awkward ownership and exit questions, before spending a dollar. Good. That is the client who gets the best work, because expectations are set in writing on both sides. Within 4 months the school ranked top 5 for acting classes searches across Los Angeles and inquiries had doubled. The interview did not slow the campaign down. It is why the campaign worked: scope, ownership, and measurement were settled before month one ever started.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I tell agencies what my budget is?
Yes, roughly. Hiding it does not get you a better price, it gets you a package that does not fit. Share a range and judge whether the proposed scope matches the money or just consumes it.
Is a local Los Angeles agency better than a national legal SEO company?
Local knowledge helps with the Map Pack, neighborhood pages, and the realities of this county’s 88 cities. National legal specialists bring deeper practice area playbooks. Either can win. Apply the same ten questions to both and let the answers decide.
What if an agency refuses to put ownership in writing?
Then it is not yours, no matter what the salesperson says verbally. Verbal promises do not transfer domains. Move on.
How many agencies should I interview?
Two or three. More than that and the calls blur together. Fewer and you have nothing to compare, which is how the best salesperson wins instead of the best agency.
Should price be one of the ten questions?
Price comes up on its own, usually inside question eight when you discuss month one. What matters more than the number is what the number buys, so always ask for the deliverables list behind the quote rather than negotiating the quote itself.
What if the agency has great reviews online?
Good, but reviews are marketing too. Verify what you can: read the negative ones first for patterns, check how long reviewers stayed, and still call the two client references. Ten minutes on the phone with a current client beats a hundred testimonials.
Can I use these questions to audit my current agency?
Absolutely, and you should. Ask them this week, especially questions five, seven, and nine. If your current agency hesitates on ownership, reporting, or exit terms after working together for a year, you have learned something worth knowing before renewal.
What is the single most important question?
Question one, the conflict question. Every other failure costs you money. A conflicted agency actively works against you with your own budget, and you will never see it happen.
Put Us Through the Same Ten Questions
Bring this list to a call with us. We will answer every item with documents, including a sample report and our ownership terms, before you spend anything.
Internet Marketing For Law Firms
The agency interview is the cheapest insurance in legal marketing. Ten questions, asked of two or three candidates, will reliably separate the agencies that build firms from the ones that bill them. Conflicts, compliance, proof, directories, ownership, staffing, reporting, month one, exit terms, references. That is the whole exam.
The agencies worth hiring enjoy this list. It lets them show off the things weak competitors cannot fake. So bring it, watch who smiles, and hire the one whose answers come with paperwork.
If one of your interview slots is still open, my team and I will happily take the exam. The call is free, and you will leave with our answers in writing either way.
Sources and References
- ✓ State Bar of California: Rule of Professional Conduct 7.1
- ✓ American Bar Association: Model Rule 5.3
- ✓ 5WPR: Audit of Legal Citations in AI Search Results (2026)
- ✓ Google Search Central: How Long SEO Takes
- ✓ Rankings.io: Law Firm SEO Budget Guidance
- ✓ LocaliQ: 2026 Advertising Benchmarks, Legal Industry
