Sector
SEO for professional services: the practice-area page and the named person
Solicitors, accountants and consultants are hired for a specific problem by someone who searched for that problem: “conveyancing solicitor Chester”, “accountant for contractors”, “HR consultant for small business”. The page that wins is the practice-area page that explains the problem, the process, the price basis and the person who handles it. Most firm websites have a services list instead, and rank for the firm's name and nothing else. SEO for a professional firm is on the Local tier from £399 a month, one firm per town and sector, confirmed personally in the reply.
The practice-area page
What a page has to contain to rank for a professional service
The person searching wants four things before they pick up the phone: whether you handle their exact problem, what the process looks like, what it costs or how the cost is worked out, and who they will be dealing with. A page that answers all four in that order ranks and converts. A page that says “we offer a full range of legal services” does neither, and it is the commonest page on a professional website.
For solicitors the third item is already a regulatory duty. The SRA Transparency Rules require price and service information on the website for conveyancing, probate, immigration, employment tribunals, motoring offences, debt recovery and licensing. Firms treat it as a compliance chore and bury it on one page. Put on the practice-area page itself, it is the most-searched information in the sector and the reason that page will rank.
For accountants the equivalent is the fee basis and the client type: a page for contractors, a page for landlords, a page for limited companies under a certain turnover, each with what the service includes and what changes the fee. For consultants it is the problem, the engagement shape and a worked example.
The named person
People instruct a person, and Google has noticed
Google's quality guidelines weight experience and accountability, and in professional services that means the people pages. A practice-area page linked to a real solicitor or accountant with a photograph, qualifications, a regulator number and the cases or clients they handle carries more trust than the same page under a firm logo.
We build the people pages properly: one per fee-earner who takes new work, structured data marking them as a person who works for the firm, and links from every practice-area page to the person who handles it. Where a firm has one partner and three associates, the partner's page is the one that ranks the firm.
Reviews for a regulated firm follow the same routine as any other business, with two additions: the wording never asks the client to comment on the outcome of a matter, and the reply never confirms that someone was a client. Both are written into the routine we hand over.
Where the enquiries come from
Local, national, or referral: the audit decides which the firm is
A high-street solicitor or accountant is chosen within a drive of the client far more often than the profession assumes, which makes the Google Business Profile as important as the website: category, the services list, hours, reviews, photographs of the office and the people. A firm with a plain site and a well-run profile outranks a firm with a beautiful site and no profile for the “near me” searches.
A specialist firm (a niche in employment law, a tax practice for a particular sector, a consultancy with a method) is chosen nationally on the practice-area pages, and the profile matters less. The audit reads where your existing enquiries and impressions come from and chooses the emphasis; most firms are more local than they think.
Referral-led firms often assume SEO is irrelevant. It is not: the referred client searches the firm's name and the partner's name before calling, and what they find (a slow site, no reviews, a profile with the wrong hours) decides whether the referral converts.
For solicitors specifically
The site we built for law firms
The solicitor version of this page, with the SRA Transparency Rules worked through service by service and the website packages for firms, is at webdesignforsolicitors.co.uk. It is run by the same person, on the same method and the same price list. Accountants and consultants are served from this site.
Questions professional firms ask
We are a law firm. Does SEO differ for a regulated firm?
In three ways. The SRA Transparency Rules already require price and service information on your website for listed services, and that information is exactly what the searches want, so compliance and ranking are the same page. Reviews are governed by both the SRA and the CMA, so the routine is written to both. And the named-person problem is sharper: people hire a solicitor, not a firm, so the people pages carry more weight than in other sectors. We built webdesignforsolicitors.co.uk for exactly this.
Do accountants need local SEO?
Most do. An accountant is chosen within a drive of the client far more often than the profession assumes, and 'accountant near me' and 'accountant in [town]' are the searches with volume. The Google Business Profile matters as much as the website; a firm with a plain site and a well-run profile outranks a firm with a beautiful site and no profile.
Our partners will not write content. What then?
They do not need to. A fifteen-minute call with a partner about what clients ask before they instruct is enough for us to write a practice-area page, and the partner checks it for accuracy. What we cannot invent is expertise, so the call is the one thing we ask for.
Can consultants with no fixed office rank locally?
Yes, as a service-area business with the address hidden and the areas listed, or nationally on the practice-area pages if clients are not local. The audit checks where your searches actually come from before choosing.
One firm per town and sector: does that apply to us?
Yes, on the Local tier: one business per town and sector, confirmed personally in the reply. A solicitor and an accountant in the same town are fine. Two conveyancing firms in one town are not.
See which practice-area searches your firm is missing
Send the site and your town. The audit lists the searches your competitors' practice-area pages rank for, what your pages lack, and the quote.