Firm type ยท /small-firms
Four attorneys, four focuses, and one page trying to cover all of them.
A firm of two to ten is big enough to have genuinely different practice focuses and small enough that nobody owns marketing full time. The result is usually a site whose structure reflects an org chart from a redesign three years ago.
The fix is structural before it is promotional, and it is the cheapest part of the whole program because it is done once.
Why twenty keyword targets does not cover a firm your size
This is arithmetic rather than an upsell, and it is the main reason we recommend Platinum to firms and Golden to solos.
Divorce, custody, support and modification is a normal spread for a firm of four.
Plus the terminal term, which is the most contested phrase in the practice.
The cluster behind each focus, which is where the cheap volume actually sits.
Which is Platinum. Twenty would cover half the focuses and none of the clusters.
If your firm genuinely competes on one focus in one county, Golden is enough and we will say so. The recommendation follows the spread, not the letterhead.
Built to survive a partner meeting
Every marketing decision at a firm of this size eventually gets questioned by somebody who was not in the room when it was made. That is the actual design constraint, and most agency reporting fails it badly.
A dashboard full of impressions and sessions does not survive a sceptical partner, because none of it can be checked. A list of live URLs does, because anyone can open three of them and see whether real content exists on real sites.
The cancellation terms do the same job. There is no contract, so nobody is defending a twelve month commitment they signed. The question every month is only whether the last month was worth the money, which is a much easier question to answer honestly.
And the price means the decision does not need to go up a level. A partner can approve $325 a month without a meeting, which is the difference between starting in March and starting in September.
A modelled scenario
A two attorney family law firm taking six matters a month
Competing on divorce, custody and a county name at once. Twenty keyword targets splits across three fronts and covers none of them, which is the case for Platinum rather than Golden. The situational pages carry the reader for weeks; the terminal term may never move in a contested county.
These are illustrative scenarios, not client results. No firm described below is a real client.
Who owns this internally, and what they need
At two to ten attorneys, marketing is somebody third job. That person needs three things from a vendor, and most agencies supply none of them.
They need to be able to answer the question what did we get for that, in a partner meeting, without preparation. A list of live URLs does that. A dashboard of sessions and impressions does not, because none of it can be checked by the person asking.
They need approvals to be a forward and a reply rather than a portal login and a training session. Content arrives by email, gets marked up in whatever way is convenient, and publishes when somebody says so.
And they need the decision to sit inside their own authority. At a few hundred dollars a month, an office manager or a junior partner can start and stop this without escalating, which is frequently the difference between starting this quarter and starting next year.
What makes this different
Every link arrives as a URL you can open
Not an impression, not a signal, not an initiative. A list with the live address of every placement, the domain authority of the host, and the keyword it supports. Ask any other agency for the same list and watch what happens.
We publish nothing without your sign off
Your firm carries the regulatory exposure for its own marketing communications, so your firm reads everything first. No queue, no timer, no piece that goes live because nobody replied.
The assets stay yours if you leave
No contract, no notice period, and nothing is removed when you stop paying. Canceling ends the next month rather than unwinding the last one. That is the difference between building an asset and renting a service.
We say no to work that will not help
If your intake is broken, if you need matters this quarter, or if your current site is structurally fine, we will tell you and you will keep your money. A firm that is not ready is a refund and a bad review waiting to happen.
We guarantee delivery and refuse to guarantee rankings
Search results are controlled by a third party whose systems change constantly. Anyone promising position is either guessing or lying, and a partner can tell the difference.
At this size the most common failure is buying a tier that covers a third of your practice focuses. We would rather size it correctly and have you stay than size it small and lose you in month four.
Questions
Who at the firm should own this?
Whoever reads the report, which is usually an office manager or the partner who drew the short straw. The workflow is designed so that person can run it without needing authority they do not have: content approval is a forward and a reply, and the monthly decision is whether to keep paying rather than a renegotiation.
We have four attorneys each with a different focus. How does that map?
One page per focus, one primary target per page, and no two pages competing. Four focuses plus a county plus the situational cluster behind each is comfortably beyond twenty keyword targets, which puts a firm your size on Platinum at minimum. Titanium if you are also carrying more than one domain.
How do we justify this against a $5,000 retainer we were quoted?
Not by arguing they are equivalent, because they are not. A $5,000 retainer buys strategy, account management, paid media and a monthly call. This buys authority building, content and technical work with every deliverable verifiable by URL. The honest comparison is scope, and the honest test is whether the smaller scope moves anything in six months.
Can partners see the work without a login?
That is the point of the report format. It is a list with live URLs, so a sceptical partner can open five of them in a meeting and form their own view in about ninety seconds. There is no dashboard, no login to distribute, and no metric that only makes sense with explanation.
How do we stop attorneys competing over the same leads?
That is an intake question rather than a search one, but the site structure helps. One page per practice focus means an inquiry usually arrives already sorted by matter type, which makes routing obvious. Firms that collapse everything onto one page get undifferentiated inquiries and then argue about them.
Should each attorney have their own page?
Yes, and they are cheaper to rank than most firms expect, because people search attorney names directly after a referral. Keep credentials accurate, avoid regulated terms unless a certification supports them, and link each attorney to the practice focus pages they actually handle.
What happens when a partner leaves?
Their page comes down and the links pointing at it get repointed rather than left to break. It sounds obvious and it is one of the most common sources of broken internal linking on firm sites, because nobody owns the website in the month somebody departs.
Put your own matter mix through the calculator.
Select the matter types your firm actually takes, set the fees, and it will recommend a tier from the numbers rather than from your headcount.