The typical cost of SEO for a law firm, and the line nobody quotes

The typical cost of SEO for a law firm is the typical cost for any small business, plus one line that no supplier puts on a quote. My own prices are $499 for a one-off audit, or $750 to $1,500 monthly for a retainer where I do the work, in Canadian dollars plus HST. Nothing on that list is priced by industry. The extra line is the lawyer’s own time, spent reading pages before they go live. That time is real money, and you can price it before you sign anything.

Before you read the rest

The prices below are mine. They are not a survey of what firms pay, and I have not run a firm’s search for months on end. The sum for review time is a method I would use, not a finding. Check it with your own figures.

What I read, and when

On 21 October 2026 I read two documents. One is the Canadian Bar Association’s page The Rules of Advertising. The other is Chapter 4, Marketing of Legal Services, in the Code of Professional Conduct for British Columbia. The CBA page notes that some law societies have adopted the language of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s Model Code.

The CBA guide quotes Model Code rule 4.2-1: “A lawyer may market professional services provided that the marketing is: demonstrably true, accurate and verifiable”. It also says “every lawyer is responsible for reviewing and adhering to the requirements of the regulatory body of their jurisdiction(s).”

The BC rule covers more than advertisements. It applies to “any marketing activity undertaken or authorized by a lawyer”. Its definition of a marketing activity names “listing in a directory” as well as advertisements. Rule 4.2-5 then sets five tests. The marketing must not be false, inaccurate, unverifiable, reasonably capable of misleading, or against the public interest.

My advice from those lines is plain. Have a lawyer read every page before it goes live.

Every page. Every month.

Where the hours go

An SEO fee is a price for hours. The word “law” on the invoice does not add hours. Scope does.

• Practice areas. One area with one strong page is a small job. Four areas sharing one page is a bigger one, because the page has to be split before anything else helps.
• Offices. Each office has its own Google Business Profile, its own place on the map and its own set of listings to keep consistent. In my judgment, two offices is close to twice that work.
• The site you already have. Templated city pages and listings that contradict each other are cleanup, and cleanup is billed like anything else. The site problems a law firm SEO expert should check first are on my page for firms.
• Who drafts the pages. A writer who knows the practice area hands the lawyer less to fix.

The line nobody quotes

A supplier quotes its own hours. It does not quote the lawyer’s.

You can price that line in three steps, and it takes one afternoon.

1. Count the pages. Ask the supplier how many pages and posts it plans to publish each month. My retainer includes writing on an agreed cadence, usually two pieces a month.
2. Time one review. Give a lawyer one real draft from the supplier. Write down how long the correction and sign-off took.
3. Multiply. Pages a month, times minutes per review, times the lawyer’s hourly rate.

Put that third number beside the supplier’s fee. The two together are what search costs the firm. A cheap supplier whose drafts need heavy correction can cost more than a dear one whose drafts need a signature. If the lawyer spends longer fixing a draft than writing it, the supplier is not saving the firm anything.

The same sum works in reverse. Fewer, better pages cost less lawyer time, which is one reason I would rather build two strong practice pages than twenty thin ones.

What my prices buy

These are the four services on my consulting page, read on 21 October 2026.

Service	Price	Who does the work	Not included
Audit	$499 once	You or your developer, from my ranked fix list	The fixes themselves
Advisory	From $499 a month	Your own person or agency, with my reviews and briefs	The work itself
Retainer	$750 to $1,500 monthly	Me, on the profile and the site	Photography, video and design
Full programme	$2,500 a month	Me, with Google Ads managed as well	Ad spend, which is paid on your own card

All of it is month to month, with thirty days notice either way. There is no setup fee. If the work is not earning its keep, you can stop. That costs me the comfort of a long contract, and it means I have to keep proving the work is worth it. The full scope is on the page for my SEO consulting services.

Reading a quote you already have

A useful quote states hours, scope and exit. Ask for each one in writing.

• What the fee buys. Pages you can count, or hours you can see. Visibility is not a unit.
• Who drafts and who approves. The approver is a lawyer at the firm, named.
• How long you are bound. A twelve month term with a discount is a fee for giving up your right to leave.
• Whose name is on the accounts. The profile, the analytics and the site belong to the firm from the first day.
• Where each claim comes from. A draft with sources beside its claims is faster to approve. A draft without them costs the lawyer a slower read.
• Whether a ranking is promised. Google’s own page on hiring help tells you to “find someone else” when a supplier guarantees its changes will put you first. A promise of first place ends the conversation.

Google’s page also says an SEO audit “should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved.” Ask for the estimate of the work. It is the number you multiply.

When the right budget is zero

Some firms should spend nothing on SEO. In my judgment, a firm whose clients arrive by referral, or one that hopes to show on the map in a town without an office of its own, is usually better off keeping the money. I set out how to test both conditions in whether SEO works for law firms. That test costs nothing, so run it first.

If the test passes, do the break-even sum I use to judge if SEO consultants are worth the fee. A family law file and a single notarised document bring a firm very different amounts. Use your own figure for each.

Questions firms ask before they pay

What is SEO for lawyers? It is the work that puts a firm in front of a person nearby who is looking for its kind of legal help, in the ordinary results and on the map. For a firm, it also means a lawyer reads each of those pages before it goes live.

How much does SEO usually cost? For me, $499 for an audit and $750 to $1,500 monthly for a retainer. A firm pays the same and adds the lawyer’s review time, which you can price with the three steps above.

How much does SEO cost a firm in Canada? My four lines are $499 for an audit, advisory from $499 a month, a retainer at $750 to $1,500 monthly and the full programme at $2,500 a month, all in Canadian dollars plus HST. The wider market ranges are in how much an SEO consultant costs in Canada.

Is 5000 too much for law firm SEO? A monthly fee is too much when you cannot see what it buys. My top line is the full programme at $2,500 a month, and that includes Google Ads management. A quote at twice that figure has to show twice the work. More practice areas, more offices, or more pages a lawyer has to read. Ask the supplier to split the fee into hours, pages and ad spend. If the figure hides the ad budget, it is not an SEO fee. That test is my judgment, not a survey of what firms pay.

Is it worth it to pay for SEO? For some firms. Do the break-even sum before you sign. If it comes out against search, keep the money, and that includes not paying me.

Method

I read each source on 21 October 2026. The prices are from my page SEO Consulting, What It Costs and How It Runs. The CBA quotations are from its page The Rules of Advertising. The BC quotations are from Chapter 4, Marketing of Legal Services. The two Google quotations are from its page Do You Need an SEO? Tips for Hiring an SEO. The three-step review sum and the split of where the hours go are my judgment. I did not count them across firms.

Start with a 15 minute call. Tell me the firm, the practice areas and the offices. Fifteen minutes is enough for me to say whether this is worth either of our time, and roughly what it would cost.