Law firms · Personal injury
Personal injury marketing, for the most competitive legal SERP that exists.
Personal injury is the most expensive and competitive area of legal marketing. The big searches, like 'personal injury lawyer' plus your city, are held by sites with years of links from other websites, and a new site won't beat them in year one. We target the narrower injury-type and city searches you can win.
What we see
What keeps personal injury firms out of Google's top results
These come up in nearly every personal injury audit we run, and each one can be fixed.
Trying to rank for 'personal injury lawyer near me' from a new site
Every page in the top ten for the big personal injury searches sits on a site with years of links from other websites and serious money behind it. A new firm site won't rank for 'personal injury lawyer [city]' in year one, however good its pages are. What works is narrower searches by injury type and place, eighteen to thirty-six months of link building and the patience to compete for the big terms in year two or three.
One 'Personal Injury' page covering ten sub-specialties
Car accidents and medical malpractice are different practices, with different evidence, different damage caps in many states and different searches, so a page that covers both ranks for neither. The pages that rank are specific: car accident, truck accident, motorcycle accident, slip and fall, premises liability, dog bite, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse and wrongful death. Pick the ones that match your case mix.
No state-specific damage-cap or statute-of-limitations content
Damage caps (especially in medical malpractice), statutes of limitations and comparative versus contributory negligence rules all vary by state. The page that ranks for 'medical malpractice attorney Maryland' covers Maryland's cap on non-economic damages, and the one that ranks for 'wrongful death lawyer Texas' covers Texas's two-year limit. State-specific pages beat general ones on searches that name a place.
Spammy directory listings that hurt more than they help
Personal injury is the legal practice most targeted by low-quality lead directories and link schemes, and many firms have years of bad listings and harmful links pointing at their site. Cleaning those up sometimes has to happen before any new SEO work shows in the rankings. We audit your listings, ask Google to ignore the worst links where needed and stop accepting links from any network or directory you can't verify.
Contingency-fee positioning treated as the same as flat-fee or hourly
Personal injury clients almost never pay up front, and the contingency fee is a big part of how they choose between firms offering the same terms. 'No fee unless we win' is standard wording, and it is also what clients expect to see. Sites that bury the fee terms or mention them once on the contact page win fewer clients than sites that lead with them.
What ranks
What Google looks at for personal injury firms
We work on each of these from the first month, and you can measure every one of them.
Personal Injury Attorney main category, sub-specialty secondaries
Use Personal Injury Attorney as the main category. Add Trial Attorney, Medical Malpractice Attorney and Wrongful Death Attorney as secondary categories where they match your case mix.
One page per sub-specialty in your case mix
Car accident, truck accident, motorcycle accident, slip and fall, dog bite, premises liability, medical malpractice, nursing home, wrongful death, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord are all candidates. Build the pages that match your case mix and skip the case types you don't want more of.
State-specific damage-cap and limitations content
Caps on non-economic damages, comparative versus contributory negligence, statutes of limitations, dram shop liability and modified joint and several liability rules differ by state. Each state you practice in needs a page that covers them. Pages written for one state win over general pages on searches that name a place.
Clean listings and links
A personal injury site that has been around for years almost always has old listings and links that need cleanup. We make your firm's name, address and phone number match everywhere, ask Google to ignore harmful links and put legal directories like Avvo, FindLaw, Justia and Martindale-Hubbell ahead of general ones. The cleanup comes before the new work.
Contingency-fee positioning at the top of every page
Put 'No fee unless we win' and your contingency percentage (typically one-third before a lawsuit is filed, 40 percent after) near the top of every practice page. Specific percentages win more clients than vague claims, and every US state bar requires some form of fee disclosure anyway.
Services that fit
Services that fit personal injury firms
Most firms start with one or two services and add more later. Every service has a published price.
Other practice areas
Other practice areas we work with
Each practice area is marketed differently, so each one has its own page.
Family law
Each family law service gets its own page, and reviews are collected in a way that protects client privacy.
See the family law pageCriminal defense
Each charge type gets its own page, with after-hours intake and case results that carry the right disclaimers.
See the criminal defense pageImmigration
Each visa type gets its own page, in the languages your clients search in, kept current with USCIS changes.
See the immigration pageEmployment law
Your site takes a clear side, plaintiff or defense, with pages for FLSA, ADA, Title VII and state wage law.
See the employment law pageMass tort
Each active drug or exposure gets its own page, published soon after a filing, with TCPA-compliant intake.
See the mass tort pageDUI defense
We build state, charge-tier and DMV hearing pages, and tell you honestly which searches you can win.
See the dui defense pagePersonal injury FAQ
Personal injury questions
Why are you telling us we cannot rank for the head term in year one?
Because we've looked at who ranks, and an agency promising faster is either misleading you or using shortcuts that collapse on Google's next update. In nearly every US metro, 'personal injury lawyer [city]' belongs to sites with hundreds to thousands of linking websites, decades of brand history and six- or seven-figure marketing budgets. Year one wins injury-type, local and brand-name searches, year two adds the big terms in smaller metros, and year three competes in larger ones if link building stays steady.
We do volume PI plus some niche cases like medical malpractice. Same site or split?
Keep them on the same site, with separate sections and separate main pages. Medical malpractice cases are larger and slower, need expert witnesses and face different searches and competition, so give each practice its own main page, with links between them where they overlap, such as hospital slip and fall cases. Separate domains usually split the links and reputation your site has built, and they cost more to maintain.
Should we work with personal injury lead generators or just do SEO?
Both can work, with limits on the lead side. Lead generators can produce cases faster than SEO, so avoid only the traps: exclusive contracts that stop you owning your intake, networks that sell the same lead to several firms within minutes and any deal that breaks your state's rules on referral fees. SEO keeps paying after you stop, while bought leads stop the day the invoice does, so use them alongside SEO.
What is the most underrated content opportunity in personal injury SEO?
It's state-specific content on damage caps and procedure. Most firms publish thin medical malpractice pages for their state that skip the cap rules, affidavit-of-merit requirements, screening panels and statute of limitations exceptions. A Maryland page with the current non-economic damage cap, the certificate-of-merit rule and the three-year statute with its discovery-rule exception will outrank thin pages without any new links, which makes depth the cheapest lever you have here.
Reviews on personal injury are often emotionally heavy. How do we manage that content?
Encourage specific reviews, because 'after my truck accident, the firm handled the insurance fight and the medical records while I focused on recovery' persuades more than 'great firm.' Reply to every review, good or bad, without revealing anything about the client. Some negative reviews can be removed if they break Google's content policy, though a calm, factual reply matters more than removal, and we supply the reply templates and review monitoring.
Get a free audit for your personal injury practice
It takes 30 minutes on a screen share. We show you where you're missing from Google, what competing firms do differently and the plan to close the gap.
