Considering hiring a legal website design company? You should probably talk to me first. I track just about every PI, Criminal law and Family Law website in the Country. Besides tracking new designs and retention, I also track rankings for 8 competitive keywords for EVERY site from every legal website company. I call this the Average Rank Consistency Score, or ARC. Since I have this data for every site, I also have it for every legal website company.

So how is this useful. Say you are a personal Injury lawyer in a super competitive Tier 1 market and you are considering hiring a legal SEO company. Wouldn’t you like to know how that company’s sites perform in similar markets? Well I have that. Or perhaps you want to know how their sites have ranked overtime? Are they going up in rankings or down? I have that too, as I have been tracking ARC scores since 2016.

Today I am analyzing a boutique legal SEO company – we will call them “Company A”. This company is fairly typical of the 250+ legal companies I track. They have around 50 legal website clients that I track in my database. They build out about 10-15 new sites a year and sport one of the best retention rates in the industry. So how good is this particularly company in getting rankings for their clients? The answer? Well it depends on the market.

Tier 1 Markets:
Tier 1 markets are the most competitive online legal markets. A Tier 1 market usually has 75+ competitors within a single practice area. “Company A” has 15 sites that intentionally market in a Tier 1 market. Their top result is a PI firm in Austin with an ARC of 1.98 – this essentially means that on average, the site ranks on the 2nd page of Google results for the 8 keywords we track. This is not great.

Now to be fair, it might be that “Company A” is not doing SEO on all of these clients. I suspect that is true with their Baltimore client and one of their Philadelphia clients as they have dropped precipitously in rankings. In fact, their Baltimore client registered their best Tier 1 ARC score of 1.26 back in 2016.

AustinTX1/29/2021Tier 1 PI1.98
NashvilleTN1/30/2021Tier 1 PI2.25
BirminghamAL1/30/2021Tier 1 PI2.42
AustinTX1/29/2021Tier 1 Fam2.73
New York CityNY1/30/2021Tier 1 PI3.10
OrlandoFL1/30/2021Tier 1 Crim3.95
IndianapolisIN1/29/2021Tier 1 PI4.33
Nassau CountyNY1/30/2021Tier 1 PI4.58
BaltimoreMD1/22/2021Tier 1 PI5.83
AtlantaGA1/22/2021Tier 1 PI9.42
OrlandoFL1/30/2021Tier 1 Fam10.64
PhiladelphiaPA1/30/2021Tier 1 PI10.67
Orange CountyCA1/30/2021Tier 1 PI10.67
PhiladelphiaPA1/22/2021Tier 1 PI10.92

The reality is that there are very few companies that can realistically claim the ability to achieve consistent ranking results in Tier 1 markets. My Company, iLawyermarketing, has top 5 ARC scores in over 30 Tier 1 markets including: NYC, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Sacramento, San Francisco, Orange County, Dallas, Colorado Springs, Indianapolis, Cleveland, etc….

Company “A” in Tier 2 Markets
So how does “Company A” fare in Tier 2 markets. As expected , in these less competitive markets Company “A” does perform better. In fact they “dominate” in two Tier 2 markets, meaning they have an ARC of less than 1. That said, those results certainly look like outliers given their average ARC for all Tier 2 markets.

LexingtonKY1/30/2021Tier 2 Crim0.36
BuffaloNY1/30/2021Tier 2 PI0.81
ColumbiaSC1/30/2021Tier 2 PI1.63
LexingtonKY1/30/2021Tier 2 PI2.26
TucsonAZ1/30/2021Tier 2 PI2.44
New havenCT1/30/2021Tier 2 PI2.75
WA1/30/2021Tier 2 Crim4.00
TacomaWA1/30/2021Tier 2 PI4.67
TucsonAZ1/30/2021Tier 2 Fam5.00
Montgomery CountyMD1/30/2021Tier 2 Crim8.45
Newport BeachCA1/30/2021Tier 2 PI8.67
SyracuseNY1/30/2021Tier 2 PI9.25
RochesterNY1/30/2021Tier 2 PI10.67

Tier 3 markets.
While “Company A” struggles to get consistent rankings in tier 1 and tier 2 markets, Company A would seem to be a great option for Tier 3 markets. Tier 3 Cities are typically suburbs of large metros, usually with 10-30 competitors in each practice area. (I left out the cities here as I do not want to reveal the identity of “Company A”)

IN1/30/2021Tier 3 Fam0.30
IA1/30/2021Tier 3 Fam0.32
MO1/30/2021Tier 3 Fam0.49
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim0.55
KY1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim0.61
WA1/30/2021Tier 3 PI0.89
IA1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim1.07
IN1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim1.17
TX1/30/2021Tier 3 PI1.25
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim1.41
MO1/30/2021Tier 3 PI1.47
IN1/30/2021Tier 3 PI2.08
TX1/30/2021Tier 3 PI2.46
TX1/30/2021Tier 3 PI2.91
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 Crim4.64
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 PI4.82
MO1/30/2021Tier 3 PI5.94
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 PI7.33
MD1/30/2021Tier 3 PI9.17

Rankings Are Not Everything
Its important to recognize that you don’t have to be in the top 3-5 of Google for the most competitive phrases to get cases online, but it sure helps. I developed the ARC because I got tired of all the Charlatans in my industry, who claim to “get you to the top of Google” when they have no proven ability to do so. My other frustration is when salespeople leverage the results of a few outlier clients who may happen to rank, while ignoring the majority of clients that are nowhere to be found.

So if you are doing due diligence on a Legal website/SEO company, feel free to reach out to me, Alex Morris. My cell is 480-889-4216. While I am the National Sales Director for iLawyermarketing, I often refer lawyers to other legal website companies , depending on your budget and ranking ambition.

I am happy to share my data with any firm. Selecting a legal SEO company is a big decision. One of the first criteria should be whether a legal website company has the chops to get your site ranking in your market.