How do you stack up among your local competitors? While settlements and verdicts are easy to compare; website strength, traffic, and leads are less obvious. Most attorneys have no idea where they actually stand in the world of digital marketing. In this blog, we demystify the metrics.
You know your courtroom, you know your practice areas, and you know who gets the best Google reviews (hopefully your own law firm!). But do you know why the firm across town ranks above you on Google, or why they're getting the leads that should be yours?
Your law firm’s marketing efforts should include regular competitive analysis to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing strategy. Understanding your current market share, content marketing opportunities and social media presence will not only help you gain competitive advantage over your online presence.
Investing in your website without considering your competitors’ is like preparing for trial without reviewing your opposing counsel's evidence. A structured competitor analysis closes that gap. It shows you exactly where you're winning, where you're losing, and — most importantly — what to do about it.
This guide walks you through every metric category that matters, why it matters for law firms specifically, and how to use the data to sharpen your digital strategy. In the meantime, reach out to Trial Guides Digital Marketing for a free site audit and competitor analysis.
Who is visiting your website, and how are they interacting with it? Marketing software can provide traffic estimates and user behavior analysis for any domain. These numbers are approximations, but they're directionally reliable and give you a clear read on which competitors are commanding audience attention. Here are the major considerations to keep in mind with respect to your competitors’ traffic patterns:
Traffic channel mix: How does a competitor get their visitors? The breakdown between organic search, direct, referral, paid, and social tells you where they're investing and where they're vulnerable. A firm that's 80% dependent on paid traffic is spending aggressively but building no long-term asset. A firm with 60%+ organic traffic is either publishing consistently or has strong domain authority. You may need to adjust your marketing tactics accordingly.
Keyword overlap: Which keywords are both you and your competitor ranking for? Which are they ranking for that you're not? This gap analysis is often where the most immediate opportunities live. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can give you valuable insights here.
Paid search activity: Are competitors running Google Ads—and, if so, what terms are they bidding on? “Advertising research” features can show you your competitors' entire paid keyword footprint and ad history, including their ad copy. A content manager will be able to analyze and emulate their tone to capture their market.
Traffic trend over time: Is a competitor's traffic growing or declining? A firm trending downward may have been hit by a Google algorithm update; this signals a weakness that you may be able to use to your advantage.
Call Trial Guides Digital Marketing to help identify areas to improve your market position, and get the full story on the legal markets in your area.
“Authority” is a critical metric for measuring how established and trustworthy your website appears to search crawlers. Tools like Moz, Ahrefs and SEMRush produce proxy scores from 0-100 that reflect how authoritative a website appears to search engines. If a competitor's DA is 45 and yours is 25, you’ll need to put in the work to close that gap.
Here are some factors that contribute to your authority score:
Referring domains: The number of unique websites linking to a competitor matters more than raw backlink count. One hundred links from a hundred different websites carries more SEO weight than a thousand links from a single source. Look at who is linking to your competitors; legal directories, local news outlets, bar associations, and law school websites are all high-value link sources worth targeting.
Keyword rankings: The specific search terms a competitor is ranking for is another critical component to consider. Rank position alone doesn't tell the story; a high-ranking, zero-volume keyword is meaningless. Look at the intersection of high-ranking and high-volume terms, and focus primarily on commercial keywords.
Keyword gap: You will find keywords where competitors rank and you don't. These “missing keywords” represent your most direct opportunity to move into your competitors’ territory. These terms have proven search demand and proven ranking potential; your only job is to create better content and build more authority around them.
Backlink quality: A competitor with 500 backlinks from legal news sites and law school faculty pages is in a very different position than one with 500 backlinks from low-quality directories. Review the profile, not just the backlink count.
Every competitor analysis includes a check on content quality; this is undoubtedly the “meat and potatoes” for law firm SEO. Google's “Helpful Content” system explicitly rewards expertise, depth, and genuine usefulness; this is why practice area pages and legal blogs that actually help a potential client understand their situation will outperform generic, AI-written pages every time. Additionally, pay attention to the following metrics:
Number of indexed pages: A competitor with 200 indexed pages has 200 potential ranking opportunities. If you only have a minimum website presence—say, a home page, practice areas, bio and contact page—you are tremendously disadvantaged. Volume matters, particularly when it’s paired with high-quality content.
Practice area page depth: What does a personal injury attorney do? Do I need to hire one? What does “premises liability” mean, anyway? You might be surprised how little potential clients understand about the legal practice. Always flesh out your practice area pages beyond 500 words of boilerplate content, and address specific local concerns. Think of your website as another type of customer service you provide.
Publishing cadence: Take note of how often your competitor is publishing new content. A firm publishing two new blog posts per month is compounding their content advantage. This is a simple thing to keep track of, as you can simply visit their blog archive to see how often it is updated.
Schema markup: Legal websites benefit significantly from structured data, especially Attorney, LegalService, FAQPage, and LocalBusiness schema. Check whether competitors are using it with Google's Rich Results Test, or work with a digital marketing team to help here.
FAQ and resource sections: FAQ content triggers featured snippets and "People Also Ask" boxes, which can commandeer the top of a search result even when your organic ranking is lower. Does a competitor have these? Do you?
Once people find your competitors’ websites, how is the experience? Google's PageSpeed Insights and the CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report) give you real-world performance scores for any public URL. These metrics matter, as a slow-to-load, hard-to-navigate page will be easier to overtake. Additionally, consider the following:
Mobile usability: More than 60% of legal searches happen on a mobile device. A site that isn't fully functional and readable on a smartphone is bleeding potential clients. Run competitor URLs through Google's PageSpeed Insights (linked above), and compare against your own.
Navigation and page depth: Is it immediately obvious from the homepage what practice areas a firm covers? How many clicks does it take to reach a specific practice area page? How many clicks to find a contact form? You want your user experience (UX) to be just as good, if not better, than your competitors’. A confusing website may actually do more harm than good.
Trust signals on-page: Notice if your competitors’ websites prominently feature attorney credentials, bar memberships, case results, client testimonials, and awards. A site visitor will generally trust a website more if these elements are present. If your competition is more robustly displaying their bonafides, you may need to step up your game.
This is arguably the most important element in terms of lead value, as local search is where clients are actually won and lost. A personal injury firm in a city doesn't need to rank nationally; they need to dominate their city's map pack and local organic results. There are several easy ways to see how your business is ranking in local search results:
Google Business Profile completeness: Compare your GBP profile against each competitor’s. Are they using all available categories? Do they have a complete services list, regular GBP posts, photos, and an active Q&A section? These elements directly influence map pack ranking. (They are also fairly easy to establish if you are new to the scene.)
Review count and rating: Look at how many Google reviews each competitor has and what their average rating is. Volume matters more than the actual review average; a firm with 200 reviews at 4.7 stars is dramatically more trusted, by both Google and prospective clients, than one with 12 reviews at 5.0. Recent reviews are also a sign of a business’ health. Don’t be afraid to ask your clients to review you—and always respond publicly in a polished and professional way.
Legal directory presence: Are competitors listed on Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, and state bar directories? These links carry both local SEO weight and direct referral traffic.
Citation consistency: Name, address, and phone number (NAP) must be identical across every directory listing. This includes Google Business Profile as well as Yelp, Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Justia, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, and any local directories. Inconsistent NAP suppresses local rankings.
Contact Trial Guides Digital Marketing for a free site audit to determine your local SEO potential.
Web traffic means nothing if that traffic doesn't turn into phone calls and client leads. This is where a lot of law firm websites leave significant revenue on the table, and where your competitor analysis can reveal opportunities that don't require a single additional backlink. While you won’t be able to analyze every lead your competitor gets, here are some signals to look out for:
Call-to-action placement and specificity: Where are competitor CTAs, and what do they say? "Contact Us" is weaker than "Get a Free Case Evaluation Today." "Call Now" with a phone number in the header is stronger than burying contact information in the footer.
Intake form: Forms with fewer than five fields typically convert at higher rates. If your competitor’s forms are embedded on their practice area pages, or locked behind a "Contact" page, they may be deterring clients from calling them.
Live chat presence: Live chat and AI chat tools are increasingly common on law firm websites. While this might not be everyone’s personal stylistic preference, a competitor running live chat after hours might be capturing leads you're missing.
Mobile call experience: On a mobile device, does tapping a phone number initiate a call immediately? Is the number displayed in the header or visible on scroll? This friction point costs firms real clients.
Work with Trial Guides Digital Marketing to improve your conversion rate and make the most out of your website marketing efforts.
A full competitor audit should be completed at least once every 3 months—or more regularly in highly competitive areas. The legal digital marketing space moves quickly: a competitor can launch a new content campaign, earn a spike in backlinks from a press mention, or overtake your map pack position in a matter of weeks. Monthly spot-checks on your key ranking positions and your Google review count relative to competitors are a reasonable baseline between full audits.
Pulling this data together can take hours and requires advanced training to do correctly.Trial Guides Digital Marketing specializes in digital marketing for attorneys and law firms. Our team runs comprehensive competitor analyses, identifies the gaps costing you leads, and builds data-driven strategies to close them.
Contact us today for your free site audit and consultation.
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